


seafoam

by tsunderestorm



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 09:33:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5451884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsunderestorm/pseuds/tsunderestorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seto and Yugi take a vacation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	seafoam

Seto’s advice for “some time off” turns out to be a week-long vacation off the coast, a seaside getaway that is nothing short of paradise situated in some secluded cove with a private beach. The house is beautiful; a wide veranda with high arches and tall white columns, open spaces and plenty of windows. There are ferns in the corners of the living room and a tree with wide, flat leaves in the courtyard and Yugi wonders if Seto picked them out himself. He likes plants, he’s come to learn; they’re all over his office he tends to them each day, much to Yugi’s surprise.

The place doesn’t just look expensive, it feels that way, and Yugi briefly allows himself to feel like the king that Seto insists he is. Everything in shades of blue and white, like a modern palace by the sea - it’s far too much, but maybe Seto’s taste for the extravagant has rubbed off on him in recent months. Pale blue walls and speckled white ceilings, bedsheets of sky-blue silk so soft that Yugi could slide around in them. (And does, when they’re rolling around in the bed in the middle of the afternoon only hours after arriving.) Seto had suggested no distractions, but still Yugi drifts off to sleep sated and safe under sumptuous sheets with a hand draped on Seto’s arm as he taps and swipes away on his tablet, the soft glow of the screen bright in the dimness of the room.

They walk along the beach at dawn: Yugi, freshly woken from peaceful dreams with creases from the sheets leaving temporary tattoos on his arms and Seto, wide-awake and alert even though he’s going on twenty sleepless hours, now, hand-in-hand with Yugi. His toes are in the sand and it’s so peaceful that he feels like crying. This is what he wants - friends, family, a lover - to be happy, and this is what he deserves, his fingers linked with Seto’s and far less weight on his heart than he’s had in half a year.

(Atem would like it here, with all of the sand, he thinks absently - he’d loved the sands of Egypt but not as much the heat, and there’s a sharp tugging at his heart. It’s strange; he misses him most at times when he’s the happiest, as if that made any sort of sense.)

Their walk is mostly silent until Seto breaks it, as he often does, voice low and heavy. 

“Places like this are so lazy.” His hand leaves Yugi’s as he pauses to pull his phone from his pocket, quickly glancing at the screen - 7 new emails, no missed calls, and 1 stock update. He swipes them away with a practiced flick of his finger and glances at the waves breaking the edge of the shore as they come in, idly observing one catching the wet sand stuck to the toe of his boot (terribly inappropriate footwear for the beach, he knows, but he is a creature of habit) and carrying it out to sea. 

Yugi diverts his attention to the lighthouse on the outcropping a few hundred yards down the beach, watching the beam make one more circle around its tower in the early-morning haze before turning to him, head cocked to the side as he asks “Lazy? What do you mean by that, Seto?”

His lover sighs, replaces his phone in his pocket, and gently links his hand back in Yugi’s to start their walk back to their beach house once more. For a few long moments, the only sound is the waves lapping at the shore, swallowing the sand and leaving it damp with lingering seafoam kisses. 

“You could get lost here and never return. After Gozaburo died, I cleaned out his real estate investments. There was a house like this, on a beach in France. No doubt purchased with his blood money. I went there, once, when I needed some time to think. Before things were... bad. The whole time…”

He trails off, bringing a hand to the high collar of his shirt and fiddling with it. Yugi isn’t even sure if Seto knows he has this habit and honestly, he’s loathe to tell him. Not even Seto Kaiba’s boyfriend could escape the trouble that would come with informing him he has a habit that he isn’t in complete control of, Yugi thinks wryly. Or maybe he does know, and just doesn’t care. Every time Gozaburo comes up in conversation (which admittedly, is not often) Seto’s hand finds his neck. 

“The whole time I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Like his awful fucking belt was around my neck again and his disgusting hands were on my shoulders weighing me down. It was the type of house men like him retreat to when they know they’re untouchable, when they know they’ve hurt and can’t be touched in return.” 

Yugi inhales sharply without really realizing it. Seto is having a bad day. He has them, still, days when clouds gather and the silver-white lining is almost impossible to find, days when he’s pulled Seto out of the rain, so to speak. Offered him an umbrella when before there was none.

“I had the whole house demolished, right down to the foundations.”

Yugi smiles softly, slowly, letting the breath he was holding out in a smooth exhale. He crosses his arms over his chest and rubs at his biceps - the morning air is still chilly, and the shiver that runs down his spine at the coldness in Seto’s voice isn’t helping. 

“That was probably best,” he offers. “Everything is better for you when it’s yours, not inherited.”

A clipped grunt. Yugi wonders if he said the correct thing.

He stops, scanning the horizon while he thinks. “Who knows, maybe you can buy this place if you like it enough. It’s such a beautiful house...it hardly seems like something Gozaburo would have liked anyway. Perfect for you!”

Seto scoffs. “I don’t need to be reminded that I’m not Gozaburo,” he spits, acid and venom and Yugi startles, glancing down at the ground. Even now, after years, Seto can still be so...touchy. It’s not that he doesn’t get it - he does. But this is supposed to be their vacation, their escape - the start of Yugi’s six-month hiatus from the professional dueling world and the start of Seto’s promise to Mokuba to let him handle more of KaibaCorp’s day-to-day, and he’s trapped in the muddy swamp of hated memories again, mired in the fog. The last thing he wants is for Seto’s mood to be soured on the first morning, especially because their first night had been so enjoyable. He can still feel Seto’s lips on his, still taste his gourmet dinner and the fire of his fingertips is still fresh on Yugi’s hips and thighs and more than all of those selfish feelings he wants to hold tight to, he just wants Seto to feel okay.

Seto turns away and steps into the waves, takes more steps into the ocean than Yugi thinks he realizes. His boots are soaked but he doesn’t seem to care, arms crossed over his chest haughtily as he looks at the rising sun like he’s challenging it. When he speaks, his tone is nothing like his stance. Speaking softly, Seto adds to the ocean, to the sky, to no one in particular, “I’m better than that.”

Yugi walks the few steps forward until the waves are lapping at his ankles and slowly, he slides his hands around Seto’s waist, linking his fingers and pressing his face into Seto’s back. He’s warm, somehow, still - the chilly morning hasn’t gotten to him, yet, and Yugi breathes him in - the heavy linger of yesterday’s cologne, a faint touch of laundry soap and the tiniest trace of sweat from the previous night. “You are, Seto. You’re better than anyone ever dreamed you could be.”

Seto sighs, shoulders sagging just a bit as he takes Yugi’s hands in his and unlinks them, turns around until he’s facing him again. His cool, confident smile is back where it should be. “I don’t need you to validate me, Yugi. I don’t need protected.”

Yugi laughs.“You’re right,” he shrugs. “But maybe I want to protect you.” 

Seto is sputtering a response when Yugi kneels to pick up a little crab the size of his palm, holding it up for Seto to see (he cringes) and laughing at the crinkle of Seto’s nose, wincing a bit when the crab’s mostly ineffective claw pinches lightly between his thumb and forefinger. “It’s okay to let people help you, remember?”

Seto puts his hands on his hips and maybe pouts a little.

“This little guy doesn’t really want my help, I think, but he needed to be protected from your boots!” Yugi reasons as he takes the crusty little creature and hurries over to a tide pool, depositing the pathetic crab next to another, smaller crab like it’s meant to be beside it, like that’s just where it belongs.

As Yugi turns to continue their walk back towards the beach house, he throws a look over his shoulder. Come and get me, it says and well, Seto Kaiba likes a challenge.

(Honestly, though, he just likes Yugi.)

Yugi...clears up the haze. Like the sunrise breaking through the clouds of night, like the weak rock breaking open to reveal sparkling crystals as strong as diamonds. He’s the one finding beauty and triumph in places Seto would never look: in the tiny pebble worn smooth by countless ocean waves, insignificant but strong, in the bauble of sea glass hidden, barely visible, underneath a rock, in himself. Maybe, he’ll allow himself to admit only when he’s relaxing, Yugi is what he needed.


End file.
